Shape Styles in PowerPoint 2011
for Mac

Learn how to apply preset Shape
Styles in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac to impart Theme coordinated fills, outlines,
and effects.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: October 3rd 2011Last Updated: October 3rd 2011

PowerPoint's fill,
line, and effect attributes enable users to customize
the look of shapes in a presentation. However, it may take ages to get that perfect
color for a shape fill -- and even after spending so much time the final look may not match
the overall Theme of your presentation. To end up with shapes that use coordinated colors, you can use the Shape Styles
gallery that contains a collection of preset styles. These styles are all
Theme-specific, so if the presentation Theme is changed -- you'll end up with
new Shape Styles that are always coordinated.

Note: Want more individuality than what is afforded by
Shape Styles? Go ahead and apply Shape Styles and then use the attributes as a starting point to changing the fill, lines, and effects.

Follow these steps to apply Shape Style presets to selected shapes:

Select the shape that you want to apply the style to. Alternatively, launch PowerPoint. You will see the Presentation Gallery -- click Cancel in this gallery to open a blank presentation with a new slide. PowerPoint 2011 users can change the slide layout to Blank by selecting Home tab | Layout | Blank.

Insert any shape on your slide -- we selected the Rectangle shape from the Shape gallery, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Shape gallery

Click and drag on the slide to insert the shape, or click once on the blank slide to place an instance of the shape. Then, select the shape, and you will see the Format tab making an appearance on the Ribbon, as shown in Figure 2 (highlighted in red).

Figure 2: Selecting the shape makes the Format tab visible

Note: The Format tab is a contextual tab. These tabs are special tabs in the Ribbon that are not visible all the time -- they only make an appearance when you are working with a particular slide object which can be edited using special options.

Click the Format tab and locate the Shape Styles group which displays a collection of preset Shape Styles that you can see in Figure 3. Hover the cursor over these Shape Style previews to make a downward arrow visible which you can see highlighted in red in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Preset Shape Styles in PowerPoint 2011

Click the downward pointing arrow (highlighted in red in Figure
3 above)
to bring up the Shape Styles drop-down gallery that you can see in Figure
4.

Figure 4: Shape Styles drop-down gallery

In this gallery, the preview highlighted in dark yellow border (refer to Figure 4 above) is the current style of the selected shape. To apply a new style, just click on any other preview thumbnail that represents a different Shape Style in the gallery as shown in Figure 5 (highlighted in red).